Legality alone is no guide for a moral people. There are many things in this world that have been, or are, legal but clearly immoral. Slavery was legal. Did that make it moral? South Africa’s apartheid, Nazi persecution of Jews, and Stalinist and Maoist purges were all legal, but did that make them moral?
Interpretation
Legal does not equate to moral; the law can permit actions that are unethical.
This quote asserts that legality should not be the sole determinant of morality for a society that values ethics. It highlights the distinction between what is legal and what is morally acceptable by referencing historical injustices that were sanctioned by law, emphasizing that just because something is permitted by legal standards does not mean it is right or just.
In practice
This quote can be used in a debate about social justice issues to highlight the importance of ethics over legality.
However, if we wish to be compassionate with our fellow man, we must learn to engage in dispassionate analysis. In other words, thinking with our hearts, rather than our brains, is a surefire method to hurt those whom we wish to help.
In a free society, government has the responsibility of protecting us from others, but not from ourselves.
What we call the market is really a democratic process involving millions, and in some markets billions, of people making personal decisions that express their preferences. When you hear someone say that he doesn't trust the market, and wants to replace it with government edicts, he's really calling for a switch from a democratic process to a totalitarian one.
The true test of one's commitment to liberty and private property rights doesn't come when we permit people to be free to do those voluntary things with which we agree. The true test comes when we permit people to be free to do those voluntary things with which we disagree.
Powerful government tends to draw into it people with bloated egos, people who think they know more than everyone else and have little hesitance in coercing their fellow man. Or as Nobel Laureate Friedrich Hayek said, "in government, the scum rises to the top".
If one person has a right to something he did not earn, of necessity it requires that another person not have a right to something that he did earn.
Modern totalitarianism can be defined as the establishment, by means of the state of exception, of a legal civil war that allows for the physical elimination not only of political adversaries but of entire categories of citizens who for some reason cannot be integrated into the political system
If someone irritates you, it is only your own response that is irritating you. Therefore, when anyone seems to be provoking you, remember that it is only your judgment of the incident that provokes you. -
Act as if the maxim of your action were to become through your will a be general natural law.
But she knew that no matter what beauty lay behind, it must remain there. No one could go forward with a load of aching memories.
Jetsetting is now not the privilege of the elite so much as a veritiginous mundanity for a permanently dispossessed global workforce.
I've always wanted to get as far as possible from the place where I was born. Far both geographically and spiritually. To leave it behind ... I feel that life is very short and the world is there to see and one should know as much about it as possible. One belongs to the whole world, not just one part of it.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.